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Utilize Your AA

Most players never buy anti-aircraft artillery and
leave the ones they start the game with in their original territories.
These units are not fixed in concrete and leaving them where they are
can be a silly oversight and costly as well.

The Eastern US is likely to never come under air
attack. I don’t recommend bumping an infantry’s spot on a transport,
but there are many instances where an extra transport is sitting around
with nothing to carry. Make use of it by bringing that AA to Europe. In
the space of a couple of turns, it can free up an AA on the backside of
Russia. Then, at some point in the future when Russia is making a stand
against Japan, that AA can help defend a Russian territory against the
likely massive Japanese air attack that will accompany any Japanese
assault.

It takes a certain amount of coordination, but there
really isn’t any good reason not to do it.

You may be worried about losing it to your opponent,
but is that really a viable economic consideration?

Let’s assume that you have the option of risking an
AA in a territory that will be attacked by 3 enemy planes. If your
territory is lost, you plan on only counterattacking with land units. In
that case, there’s no question about what you should do. Your AA will
kill 1/6th of all attacking aircraft. For
every 12 IPC fighter, that is an expected loss of 2 IPCs. Since AA only
cost 5 IPCs, if your opponent is attacking with 3 or more fighters, your
AA has paid for itself before the battle even begins!

Besides, a lot of players can get irrational when it
comes to AA. Veteran players in particular that have vivid memories of
losing lots of planes to AA fire, may hesitate before committing their
precious planes into a battle that submits them to AA fire first. Any
chance you can get of having a player make an irrational decision by
being paranoid and “scared off” of an attack by the threat of AA,
makes its effective use an even more important factor in the game.

This also eliminates the effectiveness of the
one-round-pound, as no player wants to submit their planes to a round of
AA fire without the intention of taking the territory.